Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Business owners are always conscious of the money going out in the business. They want to get good value from every dollar spent. When it comes to productivity though, it can be hard to see if the money the business is giving a good return on the expense. They would do well to pay attention to also what the hidden cost of not spending some money might have in terms of productivity gains being stifled.

"On average, Australian workers spend 16% of their day

on activities that waste their time and effort."

How do you measure productivity within your team?

Some statistics I came by recently are from an ongoing series of surveys with responses gathered from 2100 individuals across seven Australian industries. The findings were quite interesting and held what I think will surprise a lot of business owners.

Top Time Wasters In Business
The top three areas where time is lost in business is in these areas:

People can't get on with their work due to delays waiting for someone with more authority to review their work, or waiting for additional input from other parties. (16%)

Time-wasting emails (15%)

Technology waiting time. (13%)

Not All Employees Are Equally Productive

There is a tendency for some business owners to equate time spent on the job with productivity. In fact the survey results show this is quite wrong.

There is no correlation between time at work and productivity. Indeed, the least productive employees often spend the most time at work!

The most productive employees are particularly likely to be wasting time waiting on technology.

The least productive group are wasting their time in unproductive meetings.

Qualities of productive employees and unproductive employees were striking to say the least. As shown in the survey, despite the gender pay gap and the difficulty older people have in getting employment, the most productive workers were more likely to be female and older workers.

Characteristics of Most Productive Employees

Characteristics of Least Productive Employees

Yet typically the recruiting processes commonly followed are likely to screen out those very people who are potentially MOST productive employees!

Productivity By Industry
These industries represent those surveyed and this is their productivity ranking.

Declining productivity

Where productivity has declined over time, the reasons employees cite for this are issues controlled by management. While of these four reason given, one is defined as poor management communication, the other three can also relate to a communication issue.

Workers attributed productivity declines to:

Poor management

Lack of motivation and incentives

Staff being treated poorly

Poor management communication

The Role of Managers In Productivity

While it may be the individual workers' combined efforts that lead to higher productivity, getting the best from the team is a job for and a reflection of the owner and manager.

Killers of high productivity

Needless complexity

No environment that values and provides training

Tasks given to employees, but not the authority required to go with the responsibility

No performance management strategy

No vision for the employees to buy into

Time wastage due to inadequate technology

Productivity Improvement: The Upside

As you can see from these sets of data, the gains in productivity can be huge by just improving some areas of business.

That means taking stock of what's happening in the business, and taking steps to improve the efficacy of the business, and the competence of the management, and the flexibility to adapt to a changing marketplace.

That's good news for those businesses willing to improve their productivity and face their own internal devils.

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Small Business articles. Find ideas to help you develop your business and personal development. Topics to make to make you think, explore ideas and DO!.Find tips, how-to articles to help you in business and life. - Lindy Asimus Newcastle NSW Australia
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